Tuesday, January 8, 2008

No longer from the road

After a long, two-week drive cross-country, I covered 7400 miles, 18 state and DC, and a lot of knitting (and a little crocheting too). As I posted previously, I visited a wonderful shop in Fort Smith, AR. While there, I bought some lovely yarn in the clearance section (to play with) and some red cashmerino (for a hat for my brother-in-law). Of course, I also bought needles for the hat, as I wanted to finish the hat before we made it back to Fort Smith, so I could give it to hime directly rather than have to mail it. Leave it to me to forget yarn needles for tucking in the loose ends!

Of course, that doesn't matter much while the hat is still on the needles, but by the time we had worked our way to Columbus, OH, the loose ends were all that stood in the way of being done. When we spent the following night in Nashville, TN, I looked up yarn stores in the Yellowpages. There were three, so we went to the one closest to our hotel: Angelhair Yarn Co.

It was a really nice place. They had a wide variety of yarn, patterns, and supplies; good service; great lighting; and were well organized. In addition to the yarn needles I needed, I bought some cotton and a skein of Aloo, by Himalaya Yarns. Aloo is a fiber made from a kind of palm frond from a tree also called aloo. The skein I have is coarse, kind of like a cross between hemp and linen.

Speaking of linen, they also carry a brand of linen that is both soft and machine washable. I had never seen that before, and it was really nice. Unfortunately, it was a little outside my budget as well.